Suggest me a good book to read

Anybody recommend a good romance or a good real life fiction (Or what I'm actually after is, a pro-femine book?? Or two...



Going to contrast my purchase of Bill Hicks entire works in literary form but whatever

From even a cursory glance around the forum, it seems that we are awash with threads asking what everyones favourite book is or recommendations of what they should read. The problem with having lots of these threads is that they inevitably lead to a lot of repetition, and many people won't want to be constantly be posting in them to give advice. As such, I'm creating this thread to act as a repository for all the little threads around. You can browse it to see all the books recommended before, or make a post asking for recommendations and someone will be happy to provide some examples.

If you see any threads on this topic, please report them and I'll merge them with this.

Some recommendations from Ape Gone Insane:

Recently I have read The Lessons by Naomi Alderman which I thought was a good book, it's about a guy who goes to Oxford uni and is pretty miserable until he gets introduced to a cool social circle dominated by a rich gay guy called Mark, and various things happen around Mark's charming but destructive personality. I thought it was well written and I carried on thinking about the characters after I'd finished the book, thinking "IF ONLY he had done this instead of going off with Mark" etc. I enjoyed it.

Now I'm reading Lasting Damage by Sophie Hannah but only part way through that.

From a different genre, an underrated short book that I like is A Very British Coup by Christopher Mullin, this is set in the 1980s where a very left wing Labour Prime Minister, Harry Perkins, has been elected, to the horror of various elements of the 'establishment' (and the Americans), and so the 'establishment' sets to work trying to bring him down, but in a 'very British' way.

Recently I have read The Lessons by Naomi Alderman which I thought was a good book, it's about a guy who goes to Oxford uni and is pretty miserable until he gets introduced to a cool social circle dominated by a rich gay guy called Mark, and various things happen around Mark's charming but destructive personality. I thought it was well written and I carried on thinking about the characters after I'd finished the book, thinking "IF ONLY he had done this instead of going off with Mark" etc. I enjoyed it.

I didn't like that one at all, actually. The writing was pretty good, but the whole thing just felt too much like a rehash of A Secret History with a few Oxbridge clichés thrown in...

When I read the reviews of it, I noticed a theme, that people who had already read The Secret History or Brideshead Revisited, said it was basically the same type of story, and didn't like it. But other people seemed to think it was good (like me). I guess I haven't read those others so that might have helped, although now I'm going to read The Secret History

I think the university theme is one that does appeal to students although I do agree it is a bit cliche setting it in Oxford. I'd like to read a novel based around 'university friends' set in a non Oxbridge university in the UK, so you didn't have cliches like Oxford toffs or US jocks/cheerleaders etc.

Exactly. Oxford is in no way essential for the story, it's basically just there to cater to the prejudice that characters like Mark could only be found in an Oxbridge setting / Oxbridge colleges abound with people like that.